Nah, you make a good point, but even so the Darkmoon Faire has been in the game a very long time and is one of these things that needed addressing for a long time.

They are giving us three new 5-man heroics in this patch as well, but I think Blizzard has recognized that they do need to inject the game with far more new relevant content and that is why they are furiously working on the next expansion as we speak, as a way of getting that same new content to us as soon as possible. I sort of feel sorry for them because I do think they did a great job revamping all the old world areas, but I don't think anybody is giving them too much credit for it, because it's a level 85 game now. Level 85s are mad that they don't have more Level 85 content to play with. It's just... we all just need to be more patient, darn it.

First off, -10 points for reading comprehension. Nothing there says any part of any of this is going to be "tied to Gurubashi arena." The closest it comes is saying the Death Pit is LIKE Gurubashi arena, in that it's open world PVP with an objective every few hours. (And world PVP is definitely something some people have been asking for.

Secondly, you're going to be getting 3 new dungeons with the patch. I realize you're saying that if Blizzard skipped this, and everything else you personally don't deem as "content" we might get an extra dungeon or two every year. To that I say: big flippin' deal.

This isn't "catering to casuals." This isn't an "opiate for the masses." It's content. It may be different content than you're interested in, but a brief look at the comments on this article seems to indicate you're in the minority by about 10 to 1.

Blizzard should (and usually does) try to make sure all interests get something every patch or so; progression-minded people, lore nerds, pvp'ers, casuals, and those strange people who like to put on weird costumes and dance with their companion pets on mailboxes, Blizzard tries to give them all something new to enjoy as regularly as possible.

And personally, I think that's a big reason they're still the top MMO.

@Badgelooter

And comments like yours are why Blizzard should avoid listening to elitist douche nozzles such as yourself.

@ Daedalus: My reading comprehension? Let's go to the article real quick.

"Pitmaster Pei has a big old treasure chest just brimming with goodies and Darkmoon Faire Prize Tickets that he'll drag out into the Darkmoon Deathmatch Pit every three hours or so. Everybody wants it, so if you want a piece of the action you'll just have to jump in and prove that you're the toughest one in the Pit."

How is that not tied into the Gurubashi Arena? I understand it won't physically be in GuA, but it's the exact same concept.

I'm saying we just got a daily hub. No need for another. I'm saying that the challenge and enjoyment of the game (for me, at least) decrease when people screaming about being able to wear T2 again direct the development of a game, resulting in developer resources being expended on a change that exalts form over substance. What next, trannyfying your toon into your favorite character from another video game? I'm saying that, given the limited number of hours in the day for a developer to work on this game, they should be improving class bugs, fixing broken encounters, and creating content that isn't simply a relocated repeat of quests we've all done 10,000 times.

I'll withhold judgment on the minigames, if that's what they are (Ringtoss, whack-a-gnoll sure sound like fun, and Plants vs Zombies proved that people will play a minigame). As for the rest, yes, one or two extra dungeons per year would make me happier. Maybe an extra raid boss or two. Perhaps a new, epic quest line a la the AQ scepter quests.

And the only reason I'm in the minority is because the rest of my peeps are farming for the raid tonight. I'm stuck at work.

"The comments on this forum are why Blizzard should ignore complaints from casuals... Meanwhile, there are plenty of other bugs and issues that the Devs could be addressing."

I'm pretty sure that Blizz is doing what they can to fix bugs and solve other issues. Working on new "casual" content doesn't stop them from conducting their quality control. They have enough resources to devote time to both projects.

Of course you realize the double-bind that Blizzard is in. If they listen to one particular section of the playerbase that wants a bug-free game, the people who want new content (of any kind, be it dailies, dungeons, or raids) will complain because the content is being delayed for so long. If they capitalize on delivering content, doing what bug-testing they can, and then handling additional bugs as they emerge, the people who want a bug-free game are upset because some random bug is preventing them from having a good time. Balancing the demands of the playerbase with the resources the development and QA teams have to offer is not a simple equation, and it's not something solved by throwing money at it.

You remark that Blizzard isn't delivering real content, but this thread is filled with people who are excited by the content Blizzard is pushing out. Are you sure that your definition of "content" is the same as what Blizzard defines as "content?"

If your complaint is that Blizzard is not listening to you, the customer, who pays his $15 a month and has specific demands on what defines content, then I have to ask: what makes your $15 more important than the $15,000 paid by a thousand players who enjoy bite-sized content like daily quests?

No one outside knows the exact populations of hardcore raiders vs casual raiders vs guilds that 5-man only vs solo players vs RPers vs collectors vs leveling addicts vs... whatever other general term you could apply to a group of players who play similarly. As a developer, Blizzard has to decide how to please the greatest amount of its playerbase possible at the same time with the limited resource they have to work with, or instead of having one angry customer (i.e. you) they'll have 11 million angry customers, none of whom are getting what they want out of the game.

Gee, another dungeon most of the people would get tired of in 2-3 weeks or something cool you can do once a week for a year...hmmm. Yeah, I'll go with the faire thanks. Enjoy whatever it is you do when you let your sub laspe while you wait for the next raid tier.

I absolutely get it, Crow. I guess I see this as a step back toward WotLK, where the game tried to be everything for everyone and left many, many people disappointed. Raiders thought the game was a push-over, casuals thought the game was still too hard, and RPers....well I don't know what they did. Maybe they liked the expansion.

Seven new raid bosses that we can kill once per week. That's what we raiders got in 4.2. I'll even count Occuthar and grant you 8. I recall a time when a new raid had 10 or 12 bosses, minimum. Meanwhile, the casual player gets 11 new 5-man bosses they can kill as often as they please, a quest hub, and pretty decent gear so they can attempt Firelands. Between the JP gear, 353s from ZA/ZG, and MF gear, one can be pretty decked out, which is fine with me. More power to them. So while I recognize that I may speak for a minority of players, or even just for myself, it seems to me that one group, while admittedly larger, is getting more than their share of the game. And to me, that's fundamentally unfair. It's the result of a playerbase who gets fired up over being able to ride a dancing bear, but doesn't care that Rhyolith still activates volcanoes behind him (supposedly fixed, wasn't worked properly for us this week), Alysrazor can kill you with Searing Winds even though you're 8 yards away from the edge of her zone, and Beth'Tilac still eats spiderlings from across the room.

All of the above may make me a "douche-nozzle", but I'm entitled to my money's worth as well. I think Blizzard placates too much, and should be spending their time working on content that provides a challenge and something to aspire to. I'm sorry, but there will be no challenge to doing the new dailies. If you want to World PvP, the arenas in STV and Nagrand are still open.

Okay, stick with me on this: "tied in to" is not the same thing as "similar concept."

Throne of the 4 Winds is a similar concept to Gruul's Lair, in that they're both raids and both have 2 boss encounters, but that doesn't mean they're "tied in to" one another.

As to the rest of your comment, essentially your complaint is that instead of devoting 30% or 50% or whatever amount of developer time to the things you care about, you feel that Blizzard should be devoting 100% to things that specifically interest you.

Well, when you start paying the $15 a month for the other 10,999,999 of us, feel free to demand that. Until then, I'm afraid you have to accept that a business that has many customers with many different interests might occasionally spend time on things you don't care about. That's what we call "appealing to a wide audience" and you have to accept that. Accepting that you're not the center of the universe, and that by and large, no one cares what you as an individual wants is what we call "not being a 3 year old."

Daed, you want to make this a semantics argument, that's fine. You win. It has nothing to do with Gurubashi Arena. Sorry I dared suggest it.

As for what I want? I want a sufficient percentage of Dev hours committed to putting out a product that works as intended 7 weeks later. I get that bugs happen. I understand it may take time to fix them. But they haven't. They makes claims. But, as it turns out, the claims are not bearing out on live servers. What have they been spending their time on? Apparently, monkeys from North Africa. Does that make me happy? No. It doesn't.

Bad mouth the raiders all you want, they're they ones putting 378s on the AH so a casual can gear his toons enough to step into FL. It's a not-insignificant part of the playerbase, and I feel it's being ignored in the interest of something that the very players who clamor for it will be complaining about in 2 weeks because it's too "grindy." (That's a terrible sentence, but I can't do better at the moment.) So maybe I shouldn't be a 3 year-old, but they shouldn't be a 4 year-old who whines until she gets what she wants, then tosses it in the corner after a few days because it's not shiny anymore.

Buddy. It's not the same people at Blizzard who fix bugs as those who make monkeys with hats. They have different crews for different jobs, not too hard to understand is it?

As in, you can't just grab all the modeling and texturing artists and stick 'em in front of a C++ editor/compiler and expect anything productive to come out of it.

Not true Faar. One problem with your argument is that while creative developers may be unable to sit down and program the AI, they are both paid from the same pile of money. As in, the payroll account. So rather than hiring 5 new Art Devs, you hire 3 Art Devs and 2 programmers, or whatever the numbers are.

Another problem is that, at some point, a programmer is going to have to make sure the monkey doesn't fall through the ground when it's summoned, tell the AI when to scratch the monkey's ass, and explain to the monkey how to act when the owner is walking, riding, flying, standing, sitting, and fighting. So you are still expending a finite resource in that the programmer has to figure out how to make the monkey more than a 2D avatar that follows you around like a cardboard cutout.

That's not too hard to understand, is it, Buddy?

"And the only reason I'm in the minority is because the rest of my peeps are farming for the raid tonight. I'm stuck at work."

I win, +1 for me.

Also:

"All of the above may make me a "douche-nozzle", but I'm entitled to my money's worth as well."

You're correct. However, you do seem like a lad who feels entitled, and although I may not know you personally, you come across that way, and I'm sure it's present in your life outside of WoW. Leading to my being thankful I don't know you personally. Your $15 per month doesn't support the game by itself. Like someone above said, pay $15 a month for the rest of us and you can have all the repetitive raid wiping and mat grinding you can handle. Grow up.

Okay, as a software developer, I can tell you, an arbitrary standard like "working as intended in 7 days" is one of those things managers like to throw around that bear little resemblance to reality. Some bugs take 5 seconds to fix, some take 5 months, and it's not always obvious which are which right away. As for the idea that at some point a programmer has to spend time on a companion pet, you're only correct insofar as at some point in the past, programmers had to implement the entire companion pet system, and said system of course requires maintenence, but beyond that, the programmers likely don't have to spend any time on it; artists should be able to implement whatever animations they want in the framework created by programmers.

As a reformed hardcore raider with many friends who are also raiders, I can assure you, I'm not badmouthing them, nor am I saying the developers should neglect them; raiding content is an essential part of the game. The key word being "part."

What I am doing is badmouthing any person who thinks that 100% of Blizzard's resources should be spent on things that appeal to them. WoW is a big game; it has a lot of different things that appeal to a lot of different types of players. Catering to as many of them as it can is exactly why Blizzard has had so much success with the game.

"Bad mouth the raiders all you want, they're they ones putting 378s on the AH so a casual can gear his toons enough to step into FL. "

This wasn't a raider v. casual argument until YOU brought it in. Not all of the players are raiders, therefore, not all of the content needs to be raids or leading up to raiding. I say this as a raider who DID clear T11 pre-nerf.

"So maybe I shouldn't be a 3 year-old, but they shouldn't be a 4 year-old who whines until she gets what she wants, then tosses it in the corner after a few days because it's not shiny anymore."

What the hell kind of argument is that? That's an argument I'd expect kindergarteners to hav. You shouldn't act like a 3-year-old, but how childish someone ELSE acts doesn't make it okay for you to act 3 years old!

Oh, I see. That's all this was, you just whining on things being "unfair". Get over it. Making the old world playable and FUN was the point of this expansion. After this expansion, there won't be a need to fix up the world again, so us raiders will get more content. Sit in your corner and be patient, you crybaby.

Local politicians and firefighters are often paid from the same pool of money, as well.

Guess who I'm calling when there are flames.

@Audrey

Depending on how much their budget got cut, it might actually be the same people. :)

Well Don, the only thing I think I'm entitled to is a voice which is heard by Blizzard. Every casual player is entitled to the same. For the reasons I've stated, I think there needs to be a greater focus on high-end group content (lvl 85 dungeons and raids) rather than cosmetic reskins of old quest hubs. (please note that I don't mind the revamped dungeons i.e. Deadmines, ZA/ZG, etc. New mechanics, new dynamics on 5 man vs the old raid all equate to "new" content for me.) I think that the tyranny of the majority has led Blizzard down the path of making rather inconsequential changes which have no real effect on game play (why does it matter if you look lke you're wearing T12 or T6 or whatever other combo folks are going to trannyfy into?). So, as a member of the minority, I think that casual players get plenty of what they ask for. I wish I felt like my voice was as important as theirs.

As far as the remainder of your post, I'm sorry you perceive me that way. I suppose making an ad hominem attack is the easiest way to score another point or 2 in your head. Cheers to you.

@ Daed: I'm not demanding 100% of anything. As far as the programming goes, I've no clue. I'll defer to your experience there. It seems as though at least some time will have to be invested to make sure everything works as planned (even though it won't work as planned, but hey, whaddaya do?).

Catering to the masses may be fine for now. I'm concerned about the eventual dumbing down of a game I rather enjoy. The whole slippery slope argument and all. Raiding is already somewhat easier than it used to be (back in Vanilla and BC). I really don't care that they've at least partially torn down that fence because Blizzard was good enough to include heroic modes to satisfy the hard-core raider. Again, I just wish they paid as much attention to those of us on that grind as they did the folks who demand they be able to reskin their armor.

Smart business model? Maybe. The customer is always right. Which customer though? You'll also lose people (typically the ones who've been around the block for a while) if you take away the parts of the game they enjoy. I'm sure you've lost friends who didn't think the game was a challenge any more. I know I have. Spending your resources unwisely will lead to your downfall.

By the logic of some posters to my little maifesto, there shouldn't even be raids. Only whatever-small-number-you-want-to-put-on-it percent of the player base is seeing that content. They're already utilizing an inordinate amount of resources relative to the number of players experiencing the content. Like you said, raiding is an essential part of the game. I hate to see it suffer because people who will never do it when it's relevant think it's trivial.

Sun, it may not have been an argument until I brought up my views, but it's pretty clear to whom this addition is directed. I'll be catch up on whatever DMF has to offer after I'm done with T13. I have to think my raiding friends will do the same because we prefer to concentrate on the raiding. Some will do both, but I don't have that much time.

As far at the 3/4 year-old arugment, perhaps I didn't express myself very well. I'm attempting to make the point that the squeaky wheels who effected this change will be crying about how *insert whiny adjective here* DMF is and why Blizzard needs to be working on *insert anything other than raiding, because we don't do that.* If making unpopular arguments is whining, then I suppose I am a big fat whiner. Sorry.

I thought the expansion was well done. As I said, I don't care that they've reworked old zones, instances, or fights. That's an example of taking an unused asset and putting it to work for you. As far as patience, that's what the raiders are frequently told. "We'll get around to you after we handle this mass of open tickets complaining about our new pet bears not dancing in time with the game music."

Audrey, I don't really know how your comment ties into this discusson, but good thinking.

My point was about something you said further up. Look the design team gets paid to design things. It's their job. It has little effect on whether or not bugs get fixed.

As to what you said at the beginning of this last response, your voice would be better heard if you actually direct it at Blizzard. While some working there may read this blog, it is still a blog that does not actually report to Blizzard. It's owned by AOL.